plorentz's Full Review: At War With the Mystics by The Flaming Lips
"Every time you state your case, the more I want to punch you in the face." Well, okay, I'll give Wayne Coyne credit for succinctly capturing how I feel watching a George W. Bush press conference. And it's not just because I disagree with the President on so much (I do). It's because it truly hurts me to watch him speak - because his ineptitude both as a leader and a public speaker are so embarrassing that its hard to watch. I don't know whether to hate him or feel tremendously sorry for him. Even if I did agree with most of his policies, I'd probably still want to punch him in the face. But by the time I arrive at the Bush-bashing "Haven't Got a Clue" on the Flaming Lips' new record At War With the Mystics, I kinda feel the same way about Wayne Coyne.
Like Bush himself, the Flaming Lips arrive in record stores this week with a grand sense of artistic entitlement - an electoral mandate, if you will - following the massive success of their last album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Bush was wont to invoke the political capital he'd supposedly amassed when touting some of his more misguided policy initiatives after the 2004 election, and I get the feeling from their latest disc that the Flaming Lips are feeling similarly - and just as indefensibly - confident about their own sprawling ambitions.
Certainly, At War With the Mystics gets off to a promising start with the upbeat, fantastically quirky, just a tiny bit snide "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song", and the equally bizarre, more blatantly angry (but very, very catchy) "Free Radicals"; but where its predecessor was a glorious, thoughtful, totally outlandish but ultimately moving piece of musical cinema (or rather anime), this new record then devolves into the swampy psychedelia of songs like "My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion", and long, pointless bouts of instrumental noodling (with typically silly titles like "The Wizard Turns on the Giant Silver Flashlight and Puts On His Werewolf Moccasins"), only to finally emerge from this tiresome, musical morass with the crass, cliched political jibes of "Haven't Got a Clue".
Can one be blamed for violent thoughts?
It hardly seemed possible and yet here it is: The Flaming Lips have made a supremely boring record. Not a bad one, necessarily, but a dull one unquestionably. But Coyne and Company redeem themselves (or at least start to) towards the end of the record. "The W.A.N.D. ("The Will Always Negates Defeat") is an infectious chunk of fuzzed-out agit-funk; and if the nature noises and flute solos of earlier tracks like "The Sound of Failure" recalled Pink Floyd's Umma Gumma at its most indulgently guideless, "Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung" evokes the strident syncopated bombast of Animals and The Wall, the kind of 70s art-rock albums with an aura of operatic grandeur that the Flaming Lips apparently aspire to with each of their records).
And no doubt, there will be those who obsess over this album - teenagers and twentysomethings who will grow up to be fortysomethings with mortgages who may remember it as a formative experience from an ugly time. But, for as full of images and impressions and moods as this album is, it all feels a little to literal. In truth, the themes of this record - namely beauty and self-empowerment in the face of adversity - are not so very different from those on Yoshimi, but that record makes its points by sidling up to the listener to tell its stories. At War With the Mystics is less subtle, at times even condescending. If the last record wanted to make friends with me, this one seems to want to use that friendship to manipulate me (even though I largely share its political point of view) - like the head popular girl bullying all her pretty little minions, preordaining their blankly head-nodding concurrences with her every proclamation. Like George W. Bush, its prime (and easy) target, At War With the Mystics demands that the listener is either with it or against it. And frankly, I'm not sure I want to choose either.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"At War With the Mystics" by Flaming Lips
Warner Bros. Records
Released 4/4/06
Produced by Flaming Lips, Dave Fridmann, Scott Booker
55 min.
SONGS: The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song - Free Radicals - The Sound of Failure - My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion - Vein of Stars - The Wizard Turns On the Silver Flashlight and Puts on His Werewolf Moccasins - It Overtakes Me - Mr. Ambulance Driver - Haven't Got a Clue - The W.A.N.D. - Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung - Goin' On
At War With The Mystics follows the Flaming Lips tradition of not treading back over old ground, with the band initially looking for a more playful, l...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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